Web browsers are a black hole of productivity. I try to use them as little as possible when it is time to focus. I try to use help, ?, or ?? with ipython, or --help at the command line as much as possible. What about that time I am trying to see what my online friends are posting on their sites? I used to used google reader quite heavily before that was taken down.
Newsboat
I am going to give a terminal rss reader a try for a bit and see how that goes for me. I have really struggled to get into an rss reader since google reader died.
installation
I installed with the recommended snap for Ubuntu.
sudo snap install newsboat
Adding feeds
super simple
Running help for newsboat directed me towards their config files at the bottom.
❯ newsboat --help
newsboat r2.22
usage: /snap/newsboat/3849/usr/local/bin/newsboat [-i <file>|-e] [-u <urlfile>] [-c <cachefile>] [-x <command> ...] [-h]
-e, --export-to-opml export OPML feed to stdout
-r, --refresh-on-start refresh feeds on start
-i, --import-from-opml=<file> import OPML file
-u, --url-file=<urlfile> read RSS feed URLs from <urlfile>
-c, --cache-file=<cachefile> use <cachefile> as cache file
-C, --config-file=<configfile> read configuration from <configfile>
-X, --vacuum compact the cache
-x, --execute=<command>... execute list of commands
-q, --quiet quiet startup
-v, --version get version information
-l, --log-level=<loglevel> write a log with a certain loglevel (valid values: 1 to 6)
-d, --log-file=<logfile> use <logfile> as output log file
-E, --export-to-file=<file> export list of read articles to <file>
-I, --import-from-file=<file> import list of read articles from <file>
-h, --help this help
--cleanup remove unreferenced items from cache
Files:
- configuration: /home/nic/snap/newsboat/3849/.newsboat/config
- feed URLs: /home/nic/snap/newsboat/3849/.newsboat/urls
- cache: /home/nic/snap/newsboat/3849/.newsboat/cache.db
Support at #newsboat at https://freenode.net or on our mailing list https://groups.google.com/g/newsboat
For more information, check out https://newsboat.org/
I just need to edit its urls file.
nvim ~/snap/newsboat/3849/.newsboat/urls
The Urls file is just a list of urls to rss feeds. Adding mine in allowed me to see all of my posts.
https://waylonwalker.com/rss.xml
Config
I took most of my config from a blog post that I found by Evan Travers. It set some sane defaults to the reading width and vim keys.
# http://evantravers.com/articles/2020/04/15/reworking-my-rss-reading/
# Hide feeds where all the items are read.
show-read-feeds no
# Make the text width readable
text-width 50
# Use multiple threads to download all the news faster.
reload-threads 11
# browser ~/bin/newsboat-browser.sh
# browser "/usr/bin/brave-browser %u"
# unbind keys
unbind-key ENTER
unbind-key j
unbind-key k
unbind-key J
unbind-key K
unbind-key ^D
unbind-key ^U
unbind-key o
unbind-key g
unbind-key G
# bind keys - vim style
bind-key j down
bind-key k up
bind-key l open
bind-key h quit
bind-key ^D pagedown
bind-key ^U pageup
bind-key b toggle-source-view
bind-key U toggle-show-read-feeds
bind-key u show-urls
bind-key g home
bind-key G end
bind-key b open-in-browser-and-mark-read
bind-key B open-in-browser
bind-key i sort
bind-key I rev-sort
GUI Browser
No matter how many different guides I tried I keedp getting error code 127 when trying to open-in-browser. Please let me know if you know how to fix this. For now I am just going to roll with it.
Here's how it looks
browsing a feed in newsboat
reading an article in newsboat
Top comments (3)
I have no problem with
open-in-browser. Try to add thebrowserparameter to the config. Mine is:I tried this with brave, firefox, w3m, and lynx with no luck. I even tried to create a sh script like they recommended in the docs. May be something I have done.
Newsboat also integrates with several services. I use it with Inoreader. From the command line I use Newsboat, but when I'm on my iPhone I use Reeder. It's nice to keep the read articles in sync.